Rubio's remarks were the first time a Trump official had so explicitly acknowledged Israel as a driving force behind the war — landing at a moment when Americans' public support for Israel has hit historic lows.
"We knew that there was going to be an Israeli action" against Iran, Rubio told reporters on Capitol Hill yesterday. "We knew that that would precipitate an attack against American forces" by the Iranian regime.
"And we knew that if we didn't preemptively go after them before they launched those attacks, we would suffer higher casualties … And then we would all be here answering questions about why we knew that and didn't act," Rubio continued.
Rubio added later: "Obviously, we were aware of Israeli intentions and understood what that would mean for us, and we had to be prepared to act as a result of it. But this had to happen no matter what."
The widely repeated translation: The U.S. couldn't stop its ally — a far smaller nation that America arms, funds and protects — from attacking Iran on Saturday. So the U.S. had to strike Iran, too.
Not quite, U.S. officials said later. Regardless of Israel, they said, Trump ordered the strikes because he felt Iran was negotiating a nuclear deal in bad faith, and the U.S. needed to destroy the country's offensive military infrastructure.
"This operation needed to happen," Rubio told reporters, because Iran was developing too many missiles too quickly and was rebuilding its nuclear capabilities.
Rubio's remarks were widely interpreted as making the U.S. look subordinate to Israel's interests. And they inflamed already angry MAGA elites who had spent the day railing against President Trump's decision to go to war.
Anti-Israel voices on the right — as well as openly antisemitic influencers who've clawed toward the mainstream in recent years — claimed vindication.
Even some traditional Trump allies think the White House's messaging has been muddled. The Daily Wire's Matt Walsh wrote on X as MAGA fractured over Rubio's remarks: "So he's flat out telling us that we're in a war with Iran because Israel forced our hand. This is basically the worst possible thing he could have said."
But Philip Klein, editor of National Review Online, wrote that those who think Rubio "said that Netanyahu forced the U.S. into war … are conflating the question 'Why?' with the question of 'Why now?'" More
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